Washington, D.C • October 5, 1943 On this date in 1943 the Japanese news agency Domei acknowledged that the 7,903‑ton Konron Maru was sunk by an American submarine off the west coast of the Japanese home island of Honshū, with the loss of 544 lives. The troopship was sunk by the USS Wahoo using the new,…
Aboard the USS Pollack in Pacific Ocean • March 11, 1942 On this date in 1942 the USS Pollack made the first submarine attack using only its deck guns. Its targets were two Japanese fishing boats. During 1942 U.S. submarines reported 34 gun attacks on sampans and trawlers. The number of attacks increased to 64 in 1943,…
Tokyo, Japan · June 22, 1945 Beginning in the summer of 1944 Japanese military prowess fast approached terminal collapse in the Pacific. Between mid-June and early August, Saipan and Guam in the Marianas fell to superior American forces. Peleliu and Angaur in the Palau Islands were in American hands by the end of November 1944….
Japanese Naval Base, Truk Lagoon, South Pacific • March 20, 1943 Although Japanese submarines attacked far fewer ships than the Allies or Germany did, they were involved in a dozen or so documented atrocities—naval war crimes—against crew survivors. On this date in 1943 Rear Admiral Takero Kouta, commander of the First Submarine Group at the large Japanese…
Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands • February 9, 1943 On this date in 1943 Guadalcanal, the largest of the nearly one thousand islands in the Solomon Islands chain, was declared secure. U.S. Marines had landed on the previously obscure island beginning on August 7, 1942, in the first major offensive by Allied forces against Japan. Operation Watchtower, as…
West New Britain, Papua New Guinea • December 26, 1943 Following the successful conclusion of the U.S. and Australian Buna-Gona Campaign on New Guinea’s southeastern peninsula in late-January 1943, the Allies moved west along the island’s north shore. Gen. Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in the Southwest Pacific Area, used Buna (see map, lower…
Coventry, England • November 14, 1940 On this date in 1940 the first firestorm of the war was inflicted on Coventry, England, a city of almost 240,000 people, during the German Blitz against that country. German “pathfinder” bombers flying along radio-direction beams targeted the medieval cathedral city and industrial-munitions center in the English Midlands. For…
Off the China Coast • October 25, 1944 By October 1944 U.S. Navy submarine Tang and her skipper Richard O’Kane were legendary. (O’Kane had earlier made a name for himself aboard the U.S. Navy sub Wahoo as executive officer under Dudley Walker “Mush” Morton.) The Tang, a 312‑ft Balao-class submarine, was credited during the war…
Wake Island, Western Pacific Ocean • December 23, 1941 On this date in 1941 Wake Island defenders surrendered after 2 attack waves of 1,000 Japanese marines each stormed the beaches. Two days earlier, in their largest attack yet on Wake Island, the Japanese had sent 49 aircraft, dive bombers and fighters both, to knock out the last of…
Washington, D.C • December 22, 1941 On this date in 1941 the Japanese public glimpsed their first photos in the newspaper Asahi Shimbun of their country’s devastating attack on the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, the worst military catastrophe in American history. On the same date, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister…
